


The Calm Ends

by DictionaryWrites



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett, Final Fantasy X
Genre: Alternate Universe, Complicated Relationships, Religion, Summoning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 00:05:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18712456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: Vetinari promised his aunt, once upon a time, he would never become involved with a summoner.Some promises tarnish with time.





	The Calm Ends

“Ah, Vimes,” said Vetinari quietly, and Vimes lingered in the door of the other man’s office, crossing his arms slowly over his chest. He didn’t really bother to cross the threshold, lingering with his shoulder leaning against the doorframe, as he usually did, when he came to see the other man. “I thought perhaps you might approach young de Worde, what with the success of his paper, in recent years.”

“De Worde writes down the information he picks up and puts it in the paper,” Vimes said evenly. “I want the stuff he doesn’t write down.”

Vetinari’s head nodded slightly, and Vimes was aware of the tension between them as he glanced around the room, as Vetinari’s sparsely furnished, humble office, where he spent the vast majority of his time. He mostly did one errand or other, around Luca: he was known for his ability to fix problems and, more impressively, fix things that were not yet problems, but which he divined might become problems soon. Vimes was… _discomfited_ , in fact, by precisely how much power Vetinari had over the average group of people, even when times were hard and rough and full of pain, let alone during the Calm—

But the Calm was over, now.

Sin had been sighted out on the coast of Besaid, and soon, soon, things would be harder. Things were always harder, when the Calm came to an end, and the Luca Watch got busier, the watchmen busy in their places, keeping people from dissolving as tensions rose, as refugees made their way through the city, as it all went to shit.

Vetinari always knew where the tensions were.

It made him nervous, yes, and he wasn’t sure whose side Vetinari was on, at times, but he _knew_ things, and that made him invaluable. It was easy to distrust the man, when his father had been Al Bhed, so the stories on the street went. There were a lot of stories about Vetinari, most of them, Vimes was certain, untrue. Vetinari had likely started most of them himself.

“There’s nothing untoward, just yet,” Vetinari murmured, and Vimes watched as he reached up, his fingers rubbing against the side of his temple. “Six months. A long Calm, Vimes. People don’t yet wish to return to the harder ways.”

“Any good summoners on the roster?” Vimes asked, and a shadow passed over Vetinari’s face, his eyes darkening.

“One or two,” he said.

“Sybil said your aunt was a summoner,” Vimes said, after a moment’s pause.

“She was injured on her pilgrimage. Alas, she was never able to complete it.” Vetinari delicately shrugged his shoulders, glancing down to the graceful lines of his own palm.

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

Another silence, tense and heavy, passed between them, and Vimes lingered in his place, watching Vetinari for a few moments. They had come to know one another well, in the past ten years, since Vimes had taken up the position as the Captain of the Luca Watch. As well as he felt he _could_ know Vetinari, anyway – he and Sybil had moved in similar circles, when they’d been younger, and they were still on friendly terms, but Vetinari and Vimes, it was… different. Not friendly, exactly, but not with enmity, either. And yet, with that said, this was unusual. Vetinari was usually esoteric and _weird_ , but with a sort of smug superiority, a sense of knowledge he wasn’t handing over.

Now, he seemed distracted.

“You alright?” Vimes asked, finally.

“My aunt always forbade me to associate with summoners,” he said. “It was one of the only rules she ever really set me. She feared that I, public-minded as I am, might take it upon myself to become a guardian.” He said it in a sort of conversational way, as if he and Vimes often exchanged niceties about their respective childhoods, and Vimes felt himself frown, his brow furrowing.

“Yeah?” he asked. “Even with your leg?” Vetinari was dangerous. He knew that – the man wielded short blades like a purely lethal force, moved fast on his feet, could rip anyone or anything to pieces, but he had a cane, most days. He needed the cane. The idea of him travelling, _with_ the cane, from one end of Spira to the other…

Vetinari smiled, in a wan, absent sort of way. “Yes,” he said. “Even then.”

Vimes felt on uneven ground, and he leaned forward to go on, but Vetinari said, “Don’t let me detain you, Vimes. I’m sure you have paperwork to avoid back at the watch house.”

Vimes hesitated only for a few moments, trying to think of something to say, to argue, and then he gave up, and went.

Carrot told him the next day that Vetinari had closed up his office, and given his contacts to de Worde, at the paper.

\--

The young man was out on the beach again. He often was at sunset, Vetinari had found, and he’d taken notice of this behaviour in the past weeks, staying at a lodging house in Luca, reading extensively at the library in the city. He’d grown up in Luca, so Vetinari’s source told him, but when his parents had each died, he’d chosen to be educated at the Djose Temple, when he was thirteen or so, instead of staying with his sister and her husband.

He was old enough, now, to become a summoner proper, or to at least make his first attempt at the Cloister of Trials.

Rufus Drumknott, his name was.

The priests said he was a strange young man, quiet, intent, focused. He unsettled them.

“What exactly was it, Mr Vetinari,” Drumknott said quietly, his gaze fixated on the sea, “that made you decide I was worth following yourself, rather than sending one of your people to do it?”

“I heard you broke a man’s fingers when he went to backhand his little girl, out on the Highroad,” Vetinari said quietly. He watched the back of Drumknott’s head, watched his neatly parted hair that seemed quite red in the summer’s brightness, his high, black collar, tight to his neck. His staff was laid over his thighs, resting on them, and was set there, perfectly central. Drumknott, he was reliably informed, was somewhat obsessed with symmetry.

“Is that all?” Drumknott asked. “I thought perhaps it was some subtle detail of my character. I hear that you set much store by such things.”

“Do you hear much about me, Mr Drumknott?”

“Not much, no. Even less that I would trust as true.”

“But you’ve been asking about me?”

“Wouldn’t you ask after a man who followed you?”

“I would indeed. What surprises me is that I’ve not heard tell of your asking.”

Drumknott, still kneeling on the sands, turned his head, and he looked at Vetinari, his expression utterly neutral, blank. It revealed nothing whatsoever. “I can be quite convincing, Mr Vetinari, when I choose to be.” He was a little man. Red-cheeked, compact, with the face of a secretary and the silent step of a librarian: he was not, at a glance, an intimidating figure. And yet…

“So I’ve heard,” Vetinari said. “Have you a guardian, yet?”

“No.”

“Then I would offer myself.”

He expected Drumknott to mention his leg, or perhaps his age; he expected the young man to at least glance down at the cane Vetinari leaned on. He did neither, instead turning back to face the sea, and Vetinari watched the delicate shift of his hands as he formed them into the gesture of Yevon, and bowed toward the sea.

Vetinari did not believe in the teachings of Yu Yevon. This did not, in itself, preclude his service as a guardian, but it was frowned upon, certainly, to take up a non-Yevonite as a summoner. And yet… Drumknott was not unpopular, per se. Merely that people were unsettled by him.

Vetinari was fascinated.

“Thank you,” Drumknott said softly to the horizon. “I accept your offer.”

Vetinari watched the oranges, yellows, and reds of the sky bleed into darkness, and in the direction of black, watched Drumknott pray. Then he said, “We ought make for Djose come morning.”

“Yes,” Drumknott said. “Yes.”

“You don’t want to ask,” Vetinari said, “why I wish to be your guardian?”

“Do you want to ask,” Drumknott replied, his tone slightly amused, “why I wish to be a summoner?”

Vetinari felt himself smile.

“No,” he said softly.

“Then no,” Drumknott replied, and rose on delicate feet.

\--

That night, Vetinari lay on the small couch beside Drumknott’s bed in the lodging house, and he watched the young man sleep, his features slack, his breathing even and slow. Like this, he seemed even younger than his years, and Vetinari mused on the hypocrisy of it all, of protecting such a young man, only to let him be sacrificed, when the journey came to its end.

“You ought sleep,” Drumknott mumbled, shifting sleepily in his place. “I can feel you staring.”

“I shall stare more softly,” Vetinari replied.

The anxious uncertainty, the anticipation of oncoming grief and horror and pain that clawed in Vetinari’s chest, was soothed by the soft curve of Drumknott’s drowsy smile.

**Author's Note:**

> Hit me up [on Dreamwidth](https://dictionarywrites.dreamwidth.org/2287.html). You can send requests [on Tumblr](http://patricianandclerk.tumblr.com/ask), too. Requests always open.
> 
> Please, please remember to comment and let me know what you think!


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